An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition

Abstract

Reviews An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research by Diane Larsen-Freeman and Michael H. Lx)ng. London and New York: Longman, 199L xvii + 398 pp. Reviewed by Charlene G. Polio Michigan State University Over the past few years, applied linguistics has been trying answer the question: what is applied linguistics? (See discussions on this question in Issues in Applied Linguistics, 1990, Second language acquisition (SLA) has avoided the potentially polemic question: what is SLA? While there is little to doubt that SLA is a field in its own right (see Gass, in press; Larsen-Freeman, 1991), what constituted mainstream SLA, or the core of the field, may not be agreed upon. As the field grows and fragments, this issue needs to be addressed. Nowhere is the issue of defining the field of SLA as pertinent as in the writing of an introductory SLA textbook. Ten years ago, such a task would not have been as formidable. Today, one must first ask what should be included and in what depth should it be covered? The most recent effort to introduce newcomers to the field of SLA is Larsen-Freeman and Long's Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research. In evaluating such an effort, one must consider what the authors chose to include and what to exclude. Were any essential research or concepts omitted and/or was any research on the fringes made to seem part of the field? Will students who use this book have a perspective, consistent with others in the field, on what SLA is? Have the authors fulfilled their responsibility to those using the book to present a balanced view of a field that is fast finding researchers disagreeing on basic issues and theoretical frameworks? I believe that Larsen-Freeman and Long's book can be evaluated quite positively with regard to these questions. A summary of the book, with attention to these issues, follows. The book consists of eight chapters. The first is a lucid introduction, explaining, very briefly, what the field is and that, while teachers' expectations from SLA must, at this point, be modest (p. 3), there is some relation to language teaching. They take an appropriate middle ground, saying neither that SLA research must serve only to benefit language teaching, nor that those ties should be severed (see Newmeyer and Weinberger, 1988 for this latter view).